Crane on­line acad­emy ready for stu­dents

Pro­gram al­lows for learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties from com­fort of home

En­roll your stu­dent in the CIA. Not that CIA, but Crane School District’s iL-earn­ing Acad­emy (CiLA) — though that isn’t to say the on­line school won’t pro­duce fu­ture spy­mas­ters.

The on­line school got its of­fi­cial start last win­ter when the Ari­zona De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion reis­sued the school its state iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber al­low­ing it to open Jan. 1, ac­cord­ing to pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cles in the Yuma Sun.

The pro­gram fin­ished its pi­lot se­mes­ter last spring, said Crane spokes­woman Trina Siegfried, grad­u­at­ing two eighth-graders and is now open to any stu­dent in the state of Ari­zona.

That’s good news for stu­dents in the third through eighth grades whose fam­i­lies want non-tra­di­tional school op­tions, the district said in its mar­ket­ing ma­te­ri­als for the pro­gram.

“There are many rea­sons a stu­dent may choose not to par­tic­i­pate in a tra­di­tional school day. Some do not at­tend due to med­i­cal, re­li­gious, ath­letic, dis­ci­plinary, so­cial, or emo­tional rea­sons, while other fam­i­lies choose to have a fam­ily-cen­tered ed­u­ca­tion.”

Ari­zona cer­ti­fied teach­ers help cre­ate a per­son­al­ized learn­ing so­lu­tion for each stu­dent and his/her fam­ily. With di­rect par­ent in­volve­ment, the CiLA pro­vides state-of-the-art ed­u­ca­tional op­por­tu­ni­ties in the com­fort of a stu­dent’s home. Lessons are built around a grad­ual-re­lease in­struc­tional model of ex­plicit in­struc­tion, sup­ported prac­tice, in­de­pen­dent prac­tice, and as­sess­ment, the district said.

But stu­dents are re­quired to have the skills and mind­set to be able to learn on their own, the district said, in­clud­ing: the self-mo­ti­va­tion to re­main on track and en­gaged with­out con­stant teacher guid­ance; know how to nav­i­gate com­puter sys­tems and web browsers; com­mu­ni­cate with in­struc-

tors; abil­ity to self-pace and man­age time wisely; will­ing­ness and abil­ity to learn in­de­pen­dently; and the sel­f­re­flec­tion and abil­ity to un­der­stand progress re­ports.

Stu­dents can work at their own pace, whether they are try­ing to “catch up” or move ahead, Siegfried said, and the cour­ses are ac­ces­si­ble all hours of the night or day, in case of travel or late night games. There are also elec­tives to choose from that can be aligned with the stu­dent’s ed­u­ca­tional goals.

Fam­i­lies wish­ing to sign up for the CiLA need to have “qual­ity in­ter­net ser­vices,” Siegfried said, in or­der for the on­line com­po­nents to work prop­erly. Par­ents/care­givers are re­quired to fur­nish in­ter­net ac­cess at their own cost. Also, par­ents and stu­dents must cer­tify hours at­tended on a weekly ba­sis; and stu­dents must sit state stan­dard­ized ex­ams in per­son at a state-ap­proved test­ing fa­cil­ity.

For more in­for­ma­tion, con­tact the Crane School District Of­fice at 928-3733400.